A passion for the game

EDITORS NOTE: This story was originally published on November 22, 2012.

Joe Kinnan’s face was pale, his stomach was nauseous and his legs wobbled beneath him.

He needed help walking up the stadium stairs to the press box, where he sat in a chair and called plays for the game instead of on the sideline.

Manatee head coach Joe Kinnan. Kinnan was diagnosed with two types of cancer. After having half of a kidney removed he missed just three practices and no games. Photo by Thomas Bender

But Manatee High’s legendary football coach did not have a bad back like most people believed that November night in 2010.

He had cancer.

The same disease that forced him to retire from coaching in 2000 had shockingly returned to his life, and only those close to him knew about it.

He was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in the summer of 2010, and as testing for treatment was being conducted it was discovered he had renal cell carcinoma, or kidney cancer, as well.

Three days after a regular-season win over Venice High in 2010, Kinnan had the cancer, as well as half his kidney, removed in Tampa.

He missed only three practices.

He did not miss a game.

“How he did it, I don’t know,” said Manatee assistant coach Steve Peebles. “It was remarkable.”

Some coaches have such a deep passion for football, such a driving determination to succeed, such a high threshold for pain that nothing seems to keep them away from the field and the kids who perform on it.

Not even cancer, a hip replacement or a heart attack.

That’s what Kinnan, Peebles and assistant coach Jim Phelan have dealt with over the last three seasons.

Peebles, who had to take cortisone shots before games in 2009 just to stand up, was asked what that says about them.

“That we're stupid,” he said with a laugh. “No, we’re very dedicated to it and we love what we do. It’s a passion.”

The cancer coverup

It started with a stone.

In June, 2010, Kinnan was working at Manatee High when he felt some pain. A secretary took him to a walk-in clinic nearby.

While they were waiting for the doctor, Kinnan passed what was likely a kidney stone. Just to make sure everything was OK, his personal doctor later performed a scan and that’s when the lymphoma was found. It was stage one, but no less jarring.

“That floored me right there,” said Kinnan.

Since immediate treatment wasn’t necessary, Kinnan scheduled chemotherapy during the open week of the 2010 football season.

Kinnan has a close friend who is a doctor at Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa and specializes in lymphoma. While checking out Kinnan for the lymphoma, the kidney cancer was discovered.

According to the Mayo Clinic, most kidney cancers are discovered during other procedures. Renal cell carcinoma is the most common kidney cancer in adults and men are most likely to acquire it.

It is not known what causes it.

Since the kidney cancer was the more urgent of the two for Kinnan, he had the half with the cancer removed on the Monday after a 24-7 win over Venice on Oct. 29.

On Wednesday of that week, after he was released from the hospital, he wanted to go to practice. He actually drove to the field, but turned around and went home after feeling too nauseous.

“I think I took one pain pill when I got out,” said Kinnan.

By Thursday he was back coaching from a golf cart.

“I just remember the first day he drove out there and I thought, ‘You’ve got to be out of your mind,’” said Phelan.

It was a bad back. That was the word at the time. Kinnan didn’t say it himself, but he didn’t dispute it either. Only the school administration and the assistant coaches were informed. The players were never told.

“I didn’t want any sympathy or anything like that,” said Kinnan.

Said Phelan: “I think he didn’t want anyone to say, “Let’s do it for coach’s sake.’”

Kinnan called plays from the press box for Manatee’s last two games against North Port and Venice. Manatee finished the regular season unbeaten.

Kinnan was afraid of being hit on the sideline. In 1997, a player ran into him and the coach broke his leg. Not that he would miss a practice for that either.

Manatee made it to the state semifinals in 2010, before losing to St. Thomas Aquinas. Immediately after the season Kinnan went in for chemo treatment on the lymphoma. He had another in January, and a third in February got rid of it. He is now cancer-free and checked every six months.

“I was asymptomatic,” said Kinnan. “I never had any symptoms. I was very fortunate. Someone was looking out for me.

“Had I not caught it, and by the time I got a symptom, I would be in a world of hurt right now.

“I may not be alive.”

The allure of the game

Manatee and Venice play Friday in the state playoffs. The Hurricanes are attempting to win the Class 7A state title for the second straight year and a mythical national title as well. The two schools have had several memorable games in the past.

In 2000 Venice beat Manatee 24-21 in the playoffs, after a game-tying, 37-yard field goal was just short for Manatee as time expired. Venice finished with an unbeaten state championship season.

The game was also memorable because it was to be Kinnan’s last. It was announced before the playoffs that Kinnan was retiring after 20 years and four state titles at age 59. He had prostate cancer.

He took a position as chief operating officer of the Manatee County Police Athletic League, but he quickly found out how much he missed coaching, and it was to no one’s surprise. After all, Bear Bryant died on Jan. 26, 1983, only 28 days after coaching his last game.

Since his return, Kinnan has led Manatee to two unbeaten regular seasons, a state semifinal game and two state title games.

“The four years I was out, it wasn’t the same,” Kinnan said. “I realized, ‘Hey, I’m a football coach.’”

No off days in a football life

It happened in March 2010, just before lunch, in a Manatee High classroom full of troubled students. Jim Phelan passed out in front of everyone. His head smashed against the floor and it narrowly missed a file cabinet.

“People say, ‘Oh, those kids today are so bad,’” said Phelan. “No, they aren’t.

“When I woke up, there was the girl who gets into trouble all the time and she’s holding my hand saying, ‘C’mon, coach, wake up, coach.’

“There were two girls looking at me and crying and saying, ‘Don’t die.’ One went out to get a teacher. One got on the phone and called the administration and then called 911.”

Phelan drove home, slept for six hours and ate dinner. He only missed last period during school.

“If there was practice that day I would have come back,” he said.

His wife made a doctor’s appointment, but he didn’t go for three weeks. The doctor said he was 90 percent sure that Phelan had suffered a heart attack.

Phelan doesn’t remember ever calling in sick to school, and says he hasn’t missed a practice in 32 years.

“I just feel like if I’m not there, something’s going to go wrong and I need to be there even though I’m sure they would be fine without me,” said Phelan.

Peebles, a captain on Manatee’s 1983 state championship team, was determined not to miss any time either.

During the 2009 season, when Manatee lost to Tampa Plant in the state finals, Peebles could barely stand up during many of the practices. He needed three cortisone shots to get through the year.

“It was the worst pain I ever had in my life,” he said.

He scheduled hip replacement surgery around the football season, waiting until June.

“I wanted to make sure I was back and wasn’t going to miss things,” he said.

Perhaps living a football life has something to do with this mentality. Most players are no stranger to uncommon determination or unremitting pain.

Phelan remembers his high school football practices in Massachusetts during the 1970s.

One drill his team did was called ‘Bull in the Ring.’ One player would be in the middle, surrounded by the other players with their jerseys on. The coach would call out a random number, and from nowhere he’d pulverize the player in the middle.

The players also had to crawl under chicken wire and they would fight to see who could get out first.

“Just like marines,” said Phelan. “It was crazy and it had nothing to do with football.”

Kinnan didn’t do such absurd drills as a player at Manatee in the 1960s, but agrees that living a football life may have helped him get through his bouts with cancer, or at least to some extent.

“Yeah, I’m sure it did,” said Kinnan. “When people are called on to do certain things, they’re able to rise to the challenge.

“But if I had to leave, I would leave. I put things in perspective.”

Chris Anderson

Chris Anderson is an award-winning sports reporter for the Herald Tribune.

Last modified: June 20, 2014
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